The evolutionary basis of human social learning
Morgan and colleagues start from the extreme human dependence on culturally transmitted information, which requires combining social and asocial information to learn and decide well. Formal theory predicts that natural selection should favour adaptive learning strategies, but empirical work is scarce. They tested nine hypotheses derived from theoretical models in a series of computer-based experiments on when and how people use social information and whether that behaviour is adaptive. The factors examined include the number of demonstrators, consensus among them, the confidence of subjects and task difficulty.
Morgan and colleagues start from the extreme human dependence on culturally transmitted information, which requires combining social and asocial information to learn and decide well. Formal theory predicts that natural selection should favour adaptive learning strategies, but empirical work is scarce. They tested nine hypotheses derived from theoretical models in a series of computer-based experiments on when and how people use social information and whether that behaviour is adaptive. The factors examined include the number of demonstrators, consensus among them, the confidence of subjects and task difficulty.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
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Morgan, T. J. H., Rendell, L. E., Ehn, M., Hoppitt, W., & Laland, K. N. (2012). The evolutionary basis of human social learning. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 279(1729), 653-662. doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.1172